The Montana Highway Patrol (MHP) campus in Boulder was rededicated on Weds. Sept. 4, to honor former Lt. Attorney General Kris Hansen, who passed away in 2022. Hansen was largely responsible for facilitating the MHP headquarters’ relocation to Boulder from Helena. The campus was formally renamed in her memory via a State Senate bill passed in 2023.
“This place is absolutely a testament to her,” said Montana Attorney General Austin during his ceremonial address. “The Department of Justice and MHP would not have this beautiful campus, and an extremely useful piece of property to the patrol’s mission, were it not for Kris’s foresight, and her tenacity with working with the legislature.”
Hansen was one of the first to recognize that the former Montana Developmental Center Campus, which was closed in Boulder in 2015, was costing the state nearly a million dollars a year to leave vacant — and which, at similar cost, could house the MHP’s headquarters. She coordinated stakeholders and lawmakers to help quickly execute the relocation, conceived and finalized within the 2021 legislative session.
“I told her (Hansen) it’d take three to four months to execute the move,” said MHP head Col. Kurt Sager. “She said I had two! In a very short time, we had our entire operation down here in Boulder. It moved at the speed of light, which is something of an anomaly in state government.”
Hansen served as a state representative from 2010 to 2012, and was elected to state senate in 2014. She also served in the Montana National Guard, and was a veteran of the Iraq war.
